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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.